Subject: Re: First Time User
To: Avatar <bshayn1@gl.umbc.edu>
From: Colin Wood <cwood@ichips.intel.com>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 11/30/1997 15:16:00
Avatar wrote:
> 
> 	First off I'd like to thank Colin Wood and Allan Briggs (sp?) for
> helping me install my first BSD system. It took a month and it is
> definately worth the effort. I got the system to boot with few problems.

Uhhh...you're welcome :-)
 
> 	Now for the problems. I have an 85 meg drive with most of the
> 1.3_ALPHA binaries installed (no comp and no games) and no swap space (I'm
> working on it). The system runs fine except for a massive amount of
> Segmentation faults resulting in core dumps. They happen randomly and
> mostly when there is a greater demand on the processor. I am hoping I can
> fix this by adding some swap space, but I'm worried that it has more to do
> with my Performa's 68LC040 processor. I've got 36 megs of RAM installed.
> 
> 	Anyone care to conjecture on whether the faults are due to the
> processor, the lack of swap space or both?

The problem's you're seeing are almost definitely due to the 'LC040
processor (well, they could also be filesystem corruption, but that's far
less likely).  There is still at least 1 major bug in 'LC040 FPE, so this
is probably what you're running into (unless of course, you have one of
the buggy 'LC040 chips where it won't help even when the bug gets fixed).
If the problem was lack of swap space, the machine would simply lock up,
no messages, no nothing.  It would just stop (I've tried this, well,
somewhat unintentionally, on an SE/30 with only 8MB of RAM and 
no swap....starting X probably wasn't a good idea :--)

I think that you can purchase a full '040 processor for at most $200US or
so (of course, it might be easier to find and fix the FPE bug :-)

I hope this clears things up a bit.

Later.

-- 
Colin Wood                                 cwood@ichips.intel.com
Component Design Engineer - MD6                 Intel Corporation
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I speak only on my own behalf, not for my employer.